Mayor orders LAFD to release emergency data

Los Angeles May­or Ant­o­nio Vil­larai­gosa on Wed­nes­day af­ter­noon dir­ec­ted his fire chief to stop with­hold­ing in­form­a­tion from the pub­lic on the de­part­ment’s emer­gency med­ic­al re­sponses.

The may­or’s un­usu­ally blunt or­der came after a day of tur­moil at City Hall in which coun­cil mem­bers cri­ti­cized the de­part­ment for dis­con­tinu­ing a years-long prac­tice of provid­ing ba­sic res­cue re­sponse de­tails, such as in­cid­ent times, loc­a­tions and the nature of the emer­gen­cies, as well as the age and gender of vic­tims.